Google will start signing up all users for two-step verification, if they haven’t already set it up. Will it be a shock to some? For sure. But that’s fine; The surprise will go away, leaving accounts that are much more secure than they were before, especially for people who use easy-to-guess passwords or, worse, reuse the same passwords for all of their services.
But why wait? There’s no reason you can’t use Google’s two-step review today. You’re going to have to anyway, so you might as well set it up on your own terms instead of being surprised in the near future.
Before we start, however, I urge you to go through Google quickly Security check Feature to help you identify issues related to your account. This covers everything from crappy passwords to the two-step verification I am talking about to cases where you haven’t used your Google Account on different devices for an extended period of time (so why should the device keep accessing it? ).
In a perfect world, your security clearance should look like this:
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If you haven’t already turned on two-step verification, you’ll get a big warning as part of the verification process. To set this up all you have to do is visit the two-step review section Your account settings. Google will walk you through the process of setting up your account with your phone number (if you haven’t already). This gives you the standard “Google writes or calls you with a code” experience for logging into your account.
I recommend clicking Show more optionsAllows you to set up a Google prompt. To do this, you must have physical access to your device to confirm a login a bit safer than to send a code to you over text. If you’re really a fan, you can log into your Google Account with a physical security key, but even I won’t. (And I should, I’m just lazy.)
If you are using Android, this prompt will automatically appear on your device. However, on iOS you need to install that Google App, Gmailor from google Smart Lock App before you see the notifications.
Once you’ve all set up, you can google’s “2 step reviewPage to change your login mechanism by either exchanging your data or adding new measures to log into your account secondarily. How deep you want to go is up to you; The easier it is for you to sign up, the easier it can be for others to discover your technology and use it themselves.
I probably have too many techniques at hand, but they mostly depend on physical access to my device. I only use voice / text messaging as an authentication mechanism as I often log into multiple devices that I review or use for an article. (Sometimes the prompt method doesn’t work for some reason.) However, in a perfect world, I would only use this prompt or my authentication app. That’s all you really need
